At least in principle, there is widespread agreement that New Zealand should aim to increase its exports – whether you subscribe to the government’s target of 40 percent of GDP by 2025 or not. There is less agreement on how such an exports boost could be realistically achieved and which sectors are most likely to drive it. Read more

Last Wednesday, the European Commission released a set of economic policy recommendations in its very own style. Written in the usual diplomatic and legal prose of utmost transparency, and available in all the European Union’s official languages, it told each individual member state which reforms needed to be tackled if Europe ever wanted to return to growth and full employment. Read more

When New Zealand First leader Winston Peters delivered his ‘Supercity of Sin’ speech last Friday, it was a frontal assault on Chinese migration. Despite his protestations that he and his party were not anti-China, or even anti-migration, the dog-whistling was all too clear. Read more

When New Zealand First leader Winston Peters delivered his ‘Supercity of Sin’ speech last Friday, it was a frontal assault on Chinese migration. Despite his protestations that he and his party were not anti-China, or even anti-migration, the dog-whistling was all too clear. Read more

Since moving across the ditch to New Zealand last year, I have been astonished by how often a potential Trans-Tasman currency union is seriously discussed on this side of the Tasman. In Australia, the issue hardly seems to excite anyone – probably also because Australians have more important things to do than worry about New Zealand. Read more

Sometimes it is worth quoting the European Treaty at length to understand what an utterly absurd machinery the European Union has become. So with apologies to the rules of clear and concise writing, here we go: “Resolved to mark a new stage in the process of European integration undertaken with the establishment of the European Communities, drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, recalling the historic importance of the ending of the division of the European continent and the need to create firm bases for the construction of the future Europe, confirming their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law…” After this preamble, it was really only a matter of time until the European Union would ban olive oil. Read more

Budget 2013 confirms the government's determination to achieve fiscal surpluses by 2014/15 by stopping the growth in government spending. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, projected government spending in 2014/15 will be 6% lower than in 2008/9, the year in which John Key's government took office. Read more

If I were a cynic, I would now be predicting the next European bailout recipient. And the winner is… Slovenia! Read more

Standing atop Mount Victoria last Sunday, looking over Wellington basked in glorious sunshine, I was quietly confirming to myself that I really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Not in Germany where I grew up. Read more

Last week, I gave a speech to Auckland University’s economics club called The never-ending Euro crisis – Anatomy of an economic policy disaster. It was a wide-ranging presentation in which I covered the history and pre-history of European monetary union, Europe’s fiscal and monetary problems, the eurozone’s governance issues and their political implications. Read more

In September last year, I wrote about the German constitutional court’s preliminary ruling on the legality of the European Stability Mechanism (Has Germany’s court set the stage for an exit? 20 September 2012). Read more

The economics of the opposition’s plan to introduce a single-buyer model for wholesale electricity is highly dubious, as I explain in my column in The National Business Review today. But that’s not the only questionable thing about it. Read more

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